


All That Is and Ever Was

by NeoVenus22



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-13
Updated: 2010-03-13
Packaged: 2017-10-07 22:58:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeoVenus22/pseuds/NeoVenus22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's not allowed to do what she loves.  She's not allowed to do much of anything.  She's barely allowed to exist.  They make it seem like a favor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All That Is and Ever Was

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: _Stargate: Continuum_

_Not allowed_, Sam reminds herself.

She's not allowed to tell the truth about Jack, about her feelings, for seven years.

She's not allowed to stay at Stargate Command.

She's not allowed to stay in Atlantis.

She's not allowed to cry when she watches Jack die in an ugly, simple, stupid way, something that seems like a cruel joke in the face of all the things he's survived.

She's not allowed to talk to Daniel and Cameron, her best friends, her only confidantes, the only people who will keep her sane.

She's not allowed to do what she loves.

She's not allowed to do much of anything.

She's barely allowed to exist.

They make it seem like a favor.

* * *

Sam picks her name from a list. They're all bland, inoffensive, common, and she suspects there's another of each already existing in the phone book. Samantha Carter is common and inoffensive in itself, but she managed somehow to make it known, make it anything but bland. She'd be proud of herself, except for the simple fact she's no longer allowed to have her own name.

* * *

Sam reads. She has nothing else to do. A government stipend, a neat little cash egg for 'adjustment purposes', means she doesn't have to throw herself into a job just yet. So she bulk-orders authors off of Amazon. She's never really read for pleasure, before. Not fiction, at least. She only recognizes names from things she saw people carrying around at the SGC.

Lack of interest has her dismissing them all, one by one. Romance novels make her lonelier. Lawyers and cops bore her. Classics don't hold her interest. Science fiction is right out. She finally settles for the 'quirky' novels, lauded debuts by overly ambitious, overly stylized authors, heavy on characters but low on plot. People without purpose. Sam relates.

Sometime during the third week, she finally can't take it anymore and breaks. She goes to a search engine and puts in her name. She thinks at first of doing "Samantha Carter astronaut" but ego gets the better of her and she skips the job description. There are thousands of hits. She's famous, she realizes, famous enough that Special Ops Jack O'Neill, with a passing interest in astronomy, recognizes her face immediately.

She reads the articles, obituaries, mostly, about her career, and feels a flush of pride for her accomplishments. She wonders if this was always what her father had in mind when he pushed her towards NASA.

There's video footage of her funeral. _Samantha's funeral_, she reminds herself, _not mine._ She's not dead. It feels like it sometimes, like a waking death, hopeless and bleak, but she's still alive.

The funeral was held on the White House lawn, just like Landry said. There's a touching speech from President Hayes, calling her a hero and an inspiration. The head of NASA says a few words. Samantha's surviving crewmates give teary speeches. It's odd, hearing all of this adoration for someone who is both her and isn't her, and it unsettles Sam terribly. She scans the crowd of attendees, looking idly for General Landry, when she spots a familiar face and her heart drops out of her chest.

She didn't think. In three weeks, it never once occurred to her that with all the vast differences between this timeline and her own, that this was a possibility.

Her father is there. Jacob Carter, in the front row, solemn in dress blues, looking like a grieving father and not a cancer victim, looking _alive_.

Her father is alive.

It's been three years, and she thought she was okay, but she bursts into tears and wishes she had someone, anyone, to call.

* * *

Major General Jacob Carter, USAF (ret.), lives in Denver. It's surprisingly easy to get the address and she wonders why they hadn't thought about that.

Sam tries not to think about the fact she hadn't thought about it.

It seems unbearably cruel to open old wounds, which is what she'd be doing if she goes. Jacob Carter's daughter has been dead a year, and he doesn't need for her to spontaneously show up on his doorstep and leave without explanation. (There is no explanation she can offer, none that won't get her arrested and kept forever in an underground bunker.)

Sam remembers her last days with her dad. They were miserably heart-wrenching, but she wouldn't have traded them for anything. She got to say goodbye. He'd gone out of his way to make sure their goodbyes were said. Somehow, she doubts this Samantha and Jacob had had the same luxury.

She prints out his address and sticks it in one of the books she won't read.

* * *

Sam stares at her reflection in the mirror for a long time some mornings. Her handler, at the beginning, had suggested a cut, but Sam's been through enough of those to know she's not going to go back to short hair just because they want her to. She doesn't care if Samantha Carter, astronaut, had the style longer. This is Sam's now.

Her handler suggested a dye job a week later, and during the first few months, when he called every week to make sure Sam hadn't run off to try and alter the flow of time, she brought it up again. As if it matters; Sam hasn't really left her apartment except to buy groceries. She stares at her reflection, trying to imagine herself as a brunette. Or maybe something more extreme, maybe wild purple hair that would never work on a woman her age, a giant _screw you_ to the people who insist she keep a low profile. It makes her smile, weirdly.

She wonders if considering it means she's given up.

* * *

Sam's moved back to nonfiction. She cannot deny who she is, no matter how much they want her to. She gets subscriptions to every science publication she can find. The U.S. military can disapprove all they like, but she's only reading, not doing.

She drops off her novels, some of them never opened, at a local mom and pop used bookstore. The woman behind the counter comments that Sam is a voracious reader, and invites her to look around. Selling off her books opens up an account if she wants to buy more to supplement her collection. It's a nice set up. The woman seems nice. And it's not her apartment.

The next day, Sam comes back and drops off something else, a completed job application. She has a resume padded with a false employment history, fake references that are actually government agents.

Sitting around her apartment all day, devouring the ideas of others and being forced to let them sit there, untapped, boundless potential left to simmer while she does nothing. She has to do _something_, she has spent her whole life doing _something_, and even something meaningless is better than this.

* * *

It's not the most popular store. It does business well enough, is keeping afloat, but there are dry spells, afternoons or entire days where Sam is left alone without a customer in sight. She's allowed to surf the internet, so she does, tracking each of them: Rodney, John, Jennifer, Elizabeth, even Woolsey. Some are easier to find than others. She runs through a list of the Stargate Command personnel she can remember and tries to find them, tries convincing herself that sating her curiosity will help 'ease the transition'.

It does not make her more compliant to this life. It just floods her with regret. There are, of course, a slew of people still alive, who never gave their lives fighting the Goa'uld or the Ori or the Wraith, and for that, she's glad. But then she sees a record of John Sheppard's death, killed in action during the Afghanistan tour he didn't like to talk about. He's not the only one, far from it. She can't tell if those who died here and not there are equal in number to those who died there but not here, but in the end, it doesn't even matter. So much wasted potential. Depression gives way to rage.

She hates Ba'al. His egotism, his bloodlust, powerlust, his inimitable crazy brilliance, is depriving the world of amazing minds and good hearts.

And she sits, selling Janet Evanovich novels with cracked spines, knowing everything and doing nothing.

* * *

Sam gets sideways looks sometimes. She got used to it surprisingly quickly. She can ignore it, or if they push, brush it off with a simple, smiling 'I get that all the time' as she turns back to examining the eggs. The more time that passes, the less frequently it happens. It makes her feel uncomfortable in her own skin every time. As though she's not living up to expectations. A sensation she's well used to, but one she will never enjoy.

She's good at her job, though; taking inventory, smiling at customers, keeping impeccable track of the books. This is not the life anyone ever imagined for her, but she has nothing else, so she decides to make the best of it and throw herself into it.

It's been eight months.

* * *

Sam feels guilty for her resentment. It's hard not to; the general had a point. Janet's alive (although Cassie, she realizes with some horror, is probably dead. She'll never know). Landry is still married, and sees his daughter regularly. Jack... Jack's still married. Charlie's alive. Healthy. Smart. Looks like his dad. This is the life Jack wanted, even if he never said it, even if he seemed happy in the life he had. Sam has no right to take this from him. From any of them.

Sam watches the funeral again, sees her father sitting next to Mark. Is this the only reunion they'll get, without Selmak? Can she take that from them?

Landry was right. They have no business trying to change things. This is the way of the world now. Like it or not, they are the anomalies.

But she still wants to.

* * *

In a sick way, Sam is flooded with relief when she sees a scout ship whizzing overhead. Not that she particularly wants Earth to fall into Ba'al's clutches, but she's been holding her breath for a year now and she's finally allowed to exhale.

Daniel leans a bit and his gait is uneven. She tries not to notice these things, but it's difficult. He still hugs the same, though, and this time they grab each other and squeeze for all they're worth. She awards the same treatment to Cameron, who whispers a breathless 'I missed you' in her ear that makes her feel right at home. She wants to clutch their hands like a child, reassure herself of their presence. She's had dreams like this.

Sam and what remains of SG-1 climb into some F-15s, and as she prepares for takeoff, she thinks, I didn't get to say goodbye. There were some connections she could never have made, people like Janet or Jennifer or Elizabeth, people who don't know her personally here. She thinks of her father and her brother, wishes she could give them something. Anything. Reassurance. Love. Apologies. She knows she couldn't have, shouldn't have, but that doesn't stop her from wanting to.

She supposes it doesn't matter. If this works the way they're hoping, she won't ever have had this regret.

* * *

She hears Cam's voice in her head, like she has so many times over the past thirteen months, wearily commenting this isn't their first barbecue. They've fought, or tried to undermine, unseen enemies before. And it's certainly not their first time racing against the clock. Sam wishes she had the satisfaction of watching Ba'al's death, wishes she could erase the memory of Teal'c with a Ba'al tattoo (Cameron might not recognize it off the bat, but Sam's noticed Ba'al always wears his own symbol, ever the smug egomaniac). She contents herself with neat technology, a difficult problem, and gunfire echoing behind her. She wishes, for the millionth time, that there was more time in the world to mess around with devices like these and see what they could do. She had a whole year of free time without the Stargate program, and with absolutely nothing to do. Although she thinks she might miss the smell of books.

In the end, it doesn't matter. She makes the mistake of turning around at the wrong time, sees the bright light of impact, sees Daniel rear backwards, and watches, horrified, as he falls. _Not again,_ she thinks, for Daniel, for the team... _The team._ She needs to get it together. Sam forces herself to focus, to study the intricacies of the machine, wonders why there is never, ever enough time. She barks out a warning to Cameron.

She knows exactly what's happening as she gets hit. Shock kicks in less than a heartbeat later, then there's pain and then there's nothing at all, but for a brief moment of clarity, she knows everything as she's never known before. She hears Cameron call her name.

Then she hears nothing.


End file.
